We’ve covered the concept of ‘Less is more’ in many different ways before: simplicity, decluttering, minimalism.

So why another article along the same lines?

Well, because, whilst the content here is not exactly groundbreaking or new in the context of what we already promote here, it is fundamental and I’d like you to reconsider it and perhaps introduce the same concepts from a slightly different angle.

Commanding Attention

Have you ever been in a meeting with someone who kind of commands the attention of the room without saying anything at all, or very little? Even if you don’t know them or their position beforehand?

You may call this ‘gravitas’.

If everyone in the room is shouting and screaming over the top of each other, it is sometimes difficult for this person to stand out, but in that situation sometimes they stand out even more.

When someone has this particular super-power they don’t need to say much, but what they do say, because it’s very little and very considered commands more attention and has more impact – because of that very fact.

Training Dogs

When I give commands to my dog (you know, things like ‘Sit’, ‘Wait’, ‘Go’, ‘Come on then’, ‘Heel’, ‘Down’…) I very rarely shout them. I usually whisper them ever so softly and she reacts immediately and very obediently.

My dog, Jess, is at her most amazingly obedient when she hears something at a whisper. An instruction which forces her to listen carefully gets her most loyal, obedient and enthusiastic attention every time. On top of this, and from a dog-psychology standpoint, I am certain that when I am calm, confident and quiet with her, in her mind I’m positive that this re-enforces my stature as the ‘alpha-male’ in her ‘pack’ more than any other behaviour would. i.e. ranting and raving with dogs is unlikely to be interpreted as as much ‘strength’ as you might think – more likely as fun & games or a loss of control.

Writing

It’s relatively easy to write stuff and for a while when learning about the internet, websites, SEO, comments, social media and how to consume an entire life drowning in everything there is to learn and do online, I did consider writing an article every day – at least for a period and mainly because this is a great way to have your site climb the rankings and get more ‘traffic’.

Well I can’t deny that I would quite like the site to have more traffic and higher rankings, who wouldn’t? But more than that it’s very important for me to maintain a decent quality of content on the site with a consistent message and something we believe in and want to communicate.

That message has been, is and will be along this very concept of ‘less is more’. Less content, perhaps, but content only when we have something to say we feel we want to say or that is important for our message and branding. This content is twofold – either: 1) content which re-inforces our message with something new, from a new perspective, or otherwise ‘adding’ to this body of work or 2) practical, actionable, useful stuff that we’re interested in that doesn’t compromise our message and we feel will also be useful for our readership.

This also means two things for this website – the first which we already started doing in case you didn’t notice is writing content on a slightly less frequent basis (but hopefully content you will agree is worthwhile and useful) and the second being to revise the content already on the site to make sure that everything we have here maintains that high quality (as we already have a lot of content on here that’s going to take some time).

If you’d like to get involved with this ‘journey’ feel free to help us via comments, email etc. we’re easy to find (though the best way is probably via our email list – just reply to any of our emails and you’ll get a response pretty soon after).

Einstein

I have meandered among the gravitas guy in the meeting with that super-power, dog training and writing less, but I could have chosen any number of analogies or related concepts here – the rule of 3, the 80/20 rule, the idea that when you remove clutter you leave more room for what’s left – hopefully the things that are really important or at least the things you really want to focus on. As I said a lot of these things we’ve already written about which is why, though this article does touch a little on old ground, I haven’t explicitly repeated any of it.

The quote I’d like to leave you with which inspired the title of this post is one of Einsteins best:

Actually I prefer looking at this as “Make things as complex as they need to be and as simple as they can be” or “Make things as simple as they can be and as complex as they need to be” (either way works) and I had somehow let the quote become that in my mind since I first heard it (I just looked it up to make sure I got it right) but I guess I’ll give old Albert this one in his own words.

Back to the point: Give this some thought – it can be applied in pretty much any situation and is definitely a good way to go…